sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

However when I did, I ran into some icons from packages kdepim-3.5.9 and kdegraphics-4.1.0 conflicting with packages crystalsvg-icon-theme and libkipi. Here is a log…

  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/48x48/apps/kpalmdoc.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_contacts.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_date.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_journal.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_mail.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_news.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_notes.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_summary.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_summary_green.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/kontact_todo.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/64x64/actions/rss_tag.png from install of kdepim-3.5.9-10.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package crystalsvg-icon-theme-4.0.4-1.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386
  file /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/kipi.png from install of kdegraphics-4.1.0-3.fc9.i386 conflicts with file from package libkipi-0.1.5-4.fc9.i386

Error Summary
-------------

I tried deleting these packages manually but that led into an even deeper’s rats nest of dependency hell. So one thing I tried was

$ sudo yum groupremove "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"
$ sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupinstall  "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

However I still got conflcts so ran

$ sudo yum remove libkipi
$ sudo yum remove crystalsvg-icon-theme
$ sudo yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate  "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

And finally I have got KDE 4.1.0 to install in way too many steps.

It’s obvious that GNU/Linux is a woman. She’s high maintenance, expects
everything to be given to her for free, and no matter what goes wrong…
it’s your fault.

Here’s what you’ll mostly likely run into…

# sudo fdisk /dev/sda
... Steps for adding disk  elided ...

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.

ahoang@jp-db-3:~$ sudo mke2fs -m 0 -j /dev/sda3
mke2fs 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
Could not stat /dev/sda3 --- No such file or directory

The device apparently does not exist; did you specify it correctly?

# ls -la /dev/sda*
/dev/sda   /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2

The simplest thing to do is just reboot and Linux will redetect everything on restart. However, sometimes you just can’t reboot. After Googling around it seems that partprobe does the job handily. Luckily this tool is already on an Ubuntu system so no need to apt-get install but it’s only a few keystrokes away.

Here’s the rest of the log once I ran partprobe and was humming along…

# sudo partprobe
# ls /dev/sda*
/dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2  /dev/sda3
# sudo mke2fs -m 0 -j /dev/sda3
mke2fs 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
... Creating a file system output elided ...

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/tidy/tidybuf.rb:39: [BUG] Segmentation fault

At first I thought it was some incompatibility with the gem installed version of tidy however after a bit more searching it seems tied with a specific bug in Debian that is logged here. Basically, the recent version of libtidy has some sort of instability that will blow up on certain types of HTML input. Kind of not useful I say…

Looks like this has been fixed in Debian unstable so this might be a perfect candidate to have merged into Ubuntu since this really sucks inheriting a package bug.

Read the Bug Report

After doing some Googling around, it seems that the problem is tied with how rich desktop environments like KDE and Gnome manage the ‘desktop’. They normally override the traditional X11 root window with their own which means that sending output to rootwin won’t show anything.

However, luckily there are ways around this. One post on the mplayer list mentioned ways to disable background handling by GNOME and KDE. However I could not get this working under Gnome. After some more Googling around I found that Lifehacker had a hint on how to enable screensavers in the background. So using that information it was rather simple. The recipe for Ubuntu is:

# Tell GNOME to not handle the desktop
$ gconftool-2 –type bool –set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false
# Play a video file in the rootwin as fullscreen
$ mplayer -rootwin -fs my_cool_video.avi

• An Ubuntu Forum on the problem
• A vmware.com forum with more details

Most of the time, the 256MB in the XO Laptop is sufficient. But I use yum to install software, and it can be very memory hungry. I often run out of RAM when installing more than a few packages at once

While the hack is definitely a good one to get around a system limitation in the OLPC, it is yet another reason I’m glad that the OLPC is not on my desk being fiddled with. For the others who are having fun with it, that’s great however I have gotten a little tired of dealing with trying to get Linux to behave like a system that I want it to be on resource-constrained systems.

I’ve had enough experience dealing with it on the Zaurus. In general you end up having to have a specialized toolchain / user environment in order to deal with things and this can be a fun challenge when you want to use ’standard’ system components to upgrade or install something since you’ll get into dependency hell.

Another issue with running outside the rails is the community can sometimes fall out from under you and you’re left with the choice of keeping your system at its current state with tweaking or rebuilding your system again.

However, it seems that KDE4 at present is still not up to that task… ah well.

Live and learn, I guess.

So I went through the rigmarole of installing Second Life on my Linux machine at home and getting it configured to work properly with these things called SLurls which seem to be some way to handle URLs that can send you directly to a location in Second Life.

This HOWTO was awfully handy in configuring Firefox. (You need to play with the about: URL) So now I’m all ready to listen in on the conversation and run into this bug

Basically, voice chat won’t work under Linux at this point in time. So I was basically having my avatar hang out in this room with some occasional text messages coming by with other people complaining about the sound. But I had zero sound… wonderful. I quickly disconnected since there are better things to do than watch a virtual presentation with virtually no sound. Bleh…

$ sudo modprobe kvm-intel
FATAL: Error inserting kvm_intel (/lib/modules/2.6.20-14-generic/kernel/drivers/kvm/kvm-intel.ko): Operation not supported
$ dmesg | tail -n 2
[ 176.258182] kvm: disabled by bios
[ 1198.635777] kvm: disabled by bios

For the record I have:

1. A 2.6.20 based linux kernel that DEFINITELY supports kvm (Pending hardware)
2. Definitely a CPU that supports extensions
3. Enabled VT extensions in the BIOS

What the hell? I can only surmise it’s this stupid MSI-7265 motherboard that I’ve been trying to live with for the past X months. In my past post I read in a review it is a no-frills motherboard that is ‘lean and mean’. Well I’ve about had it with ‘lean and mean’. Give me a stupid motherboard that isn’t brain damaged in the BIOS. I’m going to start shopping for less sucktactular alternatives. If anyone has recommendations I’m more than happy to hear any.

• Gemify itself
• Build native extensions during Gem installation using mkrf

Which means (I hope) that there should be an easier way to get OpenGL working with Ruby. Currently it should support installing in Linux and OS X. Installation should be as difficult as:

gem install -y ruby-opengl

Deinstallation should be similar.

For win32 users, I’d suggest using the old bindings provided with the all-in-one installer although I’d like to get a gem built for win32 so hopefully it can get included in the all-in-one installer.

References

• rb-opengl in Darwin.. err MacPorts
• An older way to get OpenGL in Ruby on OS X working
]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/02/21/finally-a-gem-release-of-ruby-opengl/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/29/reviews-on-the-nokia-n800/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/29/reviews-on-the-nokia-n800/#comments Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:24:23 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/29/reviews-on-the-nokia-n800/ Eugenia of OSNews writes a nice lengthy review on the Nokia N800. It has many improvements compared to its predecessor. Some things they got right:
• Good Battery life (10-15 hrs standby, 3-5 hours in actual usage)
• Faster processor
• Great Wi-Fi reception
• Some support for VoIP (GoogleTalk, Gizmo?)
• Future Skype Support
• Opera Web Browser version handles Flash now
• Sure support for SD cards >1GB
• Reasonable price (~$400 USD)

However there are some flaws:

• They broke backwards compatibility with the previous N770 apps
• Flash can’t handle Google Videos or Youtube
• Craptastic MPEG-4 support

I have to say no Youtube and crappy MPEG-4 support for me is a dealbuster. There are a gazillion of these small devices that playback video however none of them play back ENOUGH video formats for me to be compelling. Although the N800 this time comes much closer. I guess I’ll wait for the N900 to roll about.

Other Reviews

There are other reviews floating on the net… here’s a list. I didn’t bother reading them as Eugenia’s was thorough enough to not require sifting through tons of probably useless fanboy lushing in order to find how it stacks up.

• Mobile Burn’s Review
• CNet’s Review
• ZDnet Review
• Gizmodo’s N800 News Feed
]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/29/reviews-on-the-nokia-n800/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/28/linux-and-the-msi-7265-motherboard/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/28/linux-and-the-msi-7265-motherboard/#comments Sun, 28 Jan 2007 13:59:36 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/28/linux-and-the-msi-7265-motherboard/ In an
earlier post
I wrote about the pains of Core 2 Duo motherboards and Linux support. Since September, there has been quite a bit of progress in the Linux community to support the JMicron SATA/PATA controller that is on the Intel P965 based motherboards. However, I’ve found that things are STILL not all rosy with my
MSI-7265 (aka the P965 Neo F model) motherboard. After looking around I found an interesting review on the MSI-7265 motherboard:
The Register Hardware writes:

The P965 Neo is a simple, no fuss but no frills motherboard with a decent layout

What this means is that the MSI-7265 does not offer very good access to many of the devices via the BIOS versus some other P965-based motherboards do such as the Asus P5B. After a bit of wrangling of my Gentoo installation I was able to get Linux installed, upgrade the kernel to 2.6.19-*mumble some Gentoo patch*, and boot properly.

What’s working

• The SATA AND the PATA controller on the jmicron chipset. (Allows using a DVD drive and the hard drive)
• Onboard Audio
• The onboard Realtek 8110SC-based ethernet port (requires getting a driver from the Realtek website)
• The USB ports

What’s NOT working

• Any of the Serial ATA ports off the ICH8 controller
• Suspend (It sleeps but never comes back up)

References

The Reg Hardware Review on the MSI 7265 Motherboard
Ubuntu Thread on MSI P965 Neo Install
An older Ubuntu thread on the MSI P965 Compatibility
Linux SATA Driver Status Page (Really useful!)
A Japanese post on trying to get the MSI P965 working (They failed)

]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2007/01/28/linux-and-the-msi-7265-motherboard/feed/ 1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/26/wireless-drivers-and-open-source/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/26/wireless-drivers-and-open-source/#comments Tue, 26 Dec 2006 05:35:16 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/26/wireless-drivers-and-open-source/ The Jem report has a
great article describing the intracies and difficulties in
why wireless drivers suck under Linux/FreeBSD and most other Free operating systems out there.
A choice quote from an Atmel representative is extremely enlightening on why some companies are far more open to OSS drivers:

You’ve only got three real chances for success: you can be first to market with a technology, or you can have valuable and unique features that no one else has and the market wants, or you can have the lowest price.

Atmel wasn’t first, didn’t have any new unique features, and wasn’t the cheapest, either. With the PC and OEM markets being somewhat locked out, we repositioned to focus on the embedded space where the market was experiencing and predicting large growth. In the embedded market, if you don’t get documentation to developers, then you both fail.

Basically, the players that are friendly to OSS basically lost the market initiative so OSS drivers are a way to grab a certain sub-segment of the market. Kind of sad to hear this to tell you the truth but understandable.

Read it yourself

]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/26/wireless-drivers-and-open-source/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/05/getting-a-remote-instance-of-firefox-running-with-a-local-instance/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/05/getting-a-remote-instance-of-firefox-running-with-a-local-instance/#comments Wed, 06 Dec 2006 01:47:25 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/05/getting-a-remote-instance-of-firefox-r I needed to access some web-based interface on a machine that was accessible only through an isolated network. Luckily, X11 display forwarding makes this a trivial job. However, Firefox isn’t giving me any love. Normally, you would try to do something below to start a X11 forwarded session via ssh between a machine named client1 and a machine named server1

client1$ ssh -X server1
server1$ firefox

What this does is that it ends up trying to open a new window / tab on client1 rather than on server1 and forwarding its display back home. After gnashing my teeth on this, I found the answer at this URL. THe key magic is you need to set the MOZ_NO_REMOTE value to 1 (Oh yeah, I love these features) so that it prevents Firefox from trying to query the local machine for any Firefox instances. So to fix the above example try this (assuming bourne shell syntax):

client$ ssh -X server1
server1$ export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
server1$ firefox

You might have to try giving the -P option to fire up a different profile in Firefox as well but what I show above worked for me.

]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/12/05/getting-a-remote-instance-of-firefox-running-with-a-local-instance/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/30/the-need-for-an-oss-second-life/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/30/the-need-for-an-oss-second-life/#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:52:25 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/30/the-need-for-an-oss-second-life/ There’s a Linux Journal (LJ) blog post on the need for an Open Source Second Life implementation. Their main reasons are:
• Enough of a user base now that open sourcing the client’s won’t mean much
• Their revenue stream derives from buying virtual property in the Second Life metaverse

While they are valid points, the main issue holding back Second Life being very useful on Linux is the really binary driver situation with nVidia drivers and ATI drivers. In general, I favor nVidia and ATI publishing enough so open source 3d drivers can be written in but there seems to be a serious amount of resistance. My only guess is that ATI and nVidia are in a standoff match and even releasing a glance at how they put their secret sauce together will lead to the other competitor gaining a serious upper advantage.

Is that true? I’m not sure. I’m wary of that excuse though.

Getting back to Second Life though, I’m completely indifferent about it. Perhaps Windows and Mac users might be happy with an Open Source version however I’m not sure those users would care as much.

I’ve never used Second Life before and find no compelling reason to dive into it right now even though I like 3d graphics stuff quite a bit.

]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/30/the-need-for-an-oss-second-life/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/28/linux-powered-mp3-player/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/28/linux-powered-mp3-player/#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:55:02 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/28/linux-powered-mp3-player/ About time…





Got to wait until Feb 2007 to get your hands on one though. Hope it doesn’t cost too much

]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/28/linux-powered-mp3-player/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/02/chumby-an-open-hardware-flash-player/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/02/chumby-an-open-hardware-flash-player/#comments Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:22:23 +0000 hoanga http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/02/chumby-an-open-hardware-flash-player/
Lots of discussion on Chumby has been happening ( here, here, here and here).

A couple of points on Chumby are:

1. An open source hardware flash player
2. Schematics completely open
3. Runs Linux
4. The hacker that wrote Hacking the Xbox is one of the leads behind this
5. Lots of O’Reilly alpha geeks seem utterly into this
6. Price point at around US$150

Here’s my analysis of those points. A $150 price point isn’t bad however as a thrifty geek who has bought more than enough gizmos that run linux I’m skeptical this will really rock my world. Although I really am for companies that support open hardware designs. However, if the price can eventually be brought down to $100 I’d definitely be interested in picking one up to play with. In regards to Flash. Why a closed, proprietary format? While I understand the ubiquity of flash, without either:

1. A reverse-engineered open set of creative tools
2. A more open specification than the one that is available
3. Adobe opening up their toolsets

Flash remains one of those formats I tolerate but do not encourage its proliferation. Chumby only seems to be aggravating the situation when I look at it. But, nonetheless it’s still a cool gadget but I’ll take a wait and see approach. Right now I’m looking at something that fits my current needs more.

]]> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/2006/11/02/chumby-an-open-hardware-flash-player/feed/ 2 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/